So since robberies with guns started the fall years before the registry came into place, we can conclude that the drop was independant of the registry.

Unless of course you think criminals keep up to date with the daily goings on in Ottawa. Maybe they KNEW it was coming up and at one of their monthly meetings they passed a resolution declaring that "Henceforth all robberies shall now be committed without rifles and shotguns as a cost saving measure. Registering our illegally possessed long guns is prohibitively expensive and not a critical factor in effectively separating law abiding citizens from their money by force."

Post 1995 shows a distinct downward (continuous) trend. Pre 1995 shows a sinusoidal curve type thing happening, which is very common in most statistical data with a regular variance. If you were to "zoom out" from the graph (ie have a larger margin on the # of crimes axis) you would more easily be able to see the distinct trend. Also, it is key to note the deviation between crime with any sort of weapon, and crime without a weapon.

But, who needs stats to back up our argument, when police across Canada say the registry helps them EVERY DAY - and saves lives?

I don't think there is any agreement that the long gun registry had an effect on violent crime. It's hard to study.

But the registry wasn't created just to reduce crime, but to also promote gun safety and to provide information to police about whether a situation they were attending to could involve a firearm so that they could plan appropriately.

I had my first sexual experience in 1977, but, sadly, my experiences were brief and infrequent until my 20's (see general reduction from about 1983 to 1988 - the first few years of my former marriage.

Unfortunately, my married life suffered, and ultimately ended in 1993, which, after tending to my wounded heart, again resulted in a significant improvement to my love life thereafter, until my second marriage in 2007, which, thank-you very much, is very healthy and happy.

Why point this out.

Well - isn't it obvious?

The improvement of my love life has had a direct impact, clearly, on the reduction of robberies with firearms in Canada.

Just sayin' if you want a safe society, we need to assure that yours truly gets lots of canoodling.

(Logic is just as good as the suggestion in BCL's post, and, I might add, would be much less expensive to the Canadian taxpayer, even if one had to resort to Rahim Jaffer's alleged "professional lady acquaintances").

I'd go with the argument that the police say the long-gun registry a valuable tool for them, and that it should be maintained for that reason. Crime rates in general (discounting short term blips) have all been dropping over the past few decades, so for this graph to have meaning it needs a longer timeframe to show that the rate of decline is greater than the average anticipated drop. It also needs the registry in place to maintain the same conditions.

Incidentally, by far most home robberies are perpetrated by unarmed individuals. They watch and make sure no one is home before they break in. Not getting caught is key. Criminals may be dumb, but they're not stupid.

The people who want to scrap the long gun registry just want to stop the criminal element in Canada from doing their cross boarder shopping for illegal firearms in the US.

The Firearm Program in Canada is working, if we had the same gun control laws as the US then criminals in Canada wouldn’t need to smuggle firearms from the US. There would be plenty of illegal firearms in Canada for all the criminals to use.

According to the indictment from on or about November 2004 through May 2005, Tolliver, a United States citizen residing in Canada, received requests from marijuana traffickers in Canada for firearms. Tolliver would instruct co-defendant Lamarcus Jones to acquire specific types of handguns from gun dealers in northern Kentucky through the use of "straw purchasers." Straw purchasers buy guns for other people while falsely representing that they are buying the guns for themselves. Once the guns were purchased, co defendants would remove the serial numbers in Kentucky then transport the firearms through Detroit and smuggle them into Ontario, Canada where they would be exchanged for marijuana.During the course of the investigation it was discovered that some of the guns which Tolliver was responsible for smuggling into Canada were recovered at crime scenes in the greater Toronto area. Specifically, one of the straw purchased guns was used in the shooting of a Canadian law enforcement officer and another was the primary weapon used in the killings of eight Bandito motorcycle gang members in Ontario

Certainly, we can help discover where people with REGISTERED GUNS are giving or selling them to criminals who later use them - but the criminal sanction of possessing or using an unregistered weapon is probably not of significant deterance to someone using it to rob or kill someone else.

And, only spitballing here.. but I'm guessing the number of morons who would lend their registered gun to someone else who would then use it in a crime would have to be a pretty miniscule portion of all weapons offenses..

So.

The issue, really, isn't simply wehther or not to register weapons.

It's this:

Is the cost to do so worthwhile, considering the marginal evidence to broader societal benefit?

I don't see even the rabid opponents of the registry criticizing the licensing process. We have two kinds of licenses at the moment. These are Possession Only LIcense (POL) and the Possession and Acquisition License (PAL). Without a registry of some sort, it becomes impossible to sustain the distinction, as at no point can an officer prove that a particular firearm does not belong with a particular individual, unless they are completely unlicensed. It might make more sense to eradicate the Possession Only Licensees in return for a more strict registry, and make the registry process idiot-proof and easy. (It's already easy, but idiots, as they say, are so creative.)That is to say, if you own a long arm and register it properly (during an amnesty, say), you are deemed to have a the equivalent of a POL. If you want to buy a new one, go through the PAL process. If you have a gun that is not registered after a set period, pay a fine. Do it twice, and go to jail.

It's funny that the right wingnuts argue that "crime is up, up, up..." all the time, but in this instance - when faced with arguing the registry, would like to claim that crime is down, but that the registry didn't have anything to do with it...

Can't have it both ways. The fearmongering must end.

By the way, studying the graphs over a long period of time, and considering firearm crimes, the registry does work. Ask police associations - the registry works. If you "back the blue", and "support our forces", then you'll accept their claims that the registry helps save THEIR lives.

Western Grit wrote: "It's funny that the right wingnuts argue that "crime is up, up, up..." all the time, but in this instance - when faced with arguing the registry, would like to claim that crime is down, but that the registry didn't have anything to do with it...

Can't have it both ways."

You must have a problem reading graphs, look again closely. Some crimes are up and some are down. Robberies with no weapon are up. Robberies with a Firearm are down, but that downward trend can in no way be attributed to the 1995 gun registration program.

If it was effective, we would have seen rising firearm related robberies until, probably 1996, then a plateau, followed by a steep decline sometime after as the program was enforced.

Instead we see a steep decline starting several years before 1995 and continuing, unchanged until 2002.

Robberies with a gun show some correlation with the other two categories on the graph -- they tend to peak and decline relatively around the same time (I'm not saying they're equivalent to each other, but the dips and rises occur at the same time in the three catagories.) Interesting enough when the economy was in the crapper in the early eighties and late eighties there's a peak in all three lines.

Something to consider -- why does the rate of robberies with guns break completely with the other two lines in the early nineties.

Another thing to consider -- why does the rate of robberies decline in the early nineties, even before the gun registry. Possibly this has to do with Bill C-17.

Bill C-17 was introduced and passed in 1991 by the Kim Campbell Conservatives. It created expanded powers for the minister of justice to restrict any firearm and prohibit those not "commonly used in Canada for hunting or sporting purposes". Other sections included new powers for police to search the homes of certain types of "gun collectors", and placed limits on magazine sizes (10 rounds for semi-auto pistols and 5 for centre-fire semi-auto rifles and shotguns, but there are a fewexceptions).

So there was an early punch in the nineties that might have started the decline that the registry helped continue... it's not conclusive, but this is an interesting area of study.